NEHEMIAH

This debut novel is a fabulous fictionalized account of the 17th century Polish Rabbi Nehemiah HaKohen's journey to Istanbul to meet the messiah, Shabbetai Zevi. His journey comes in the aftermath of 5408, "the year of Chmiel (may his name be blotted out), a time of trouble for the Jews of Poland." Writing in a singular prose that breathes life into ancient idioms, Mayer has turned a scantly-documented figure into a complex character who encapsulates and transcends his peripheral place in World History.

Reb Nehemiah is a pariah in a world of pariahs. An eleven-fingered man, he is described by his wife as "one-third street peddler, one-quarter itinerant preacher, one-sixth scribbler of charms. topped off by smaller fractions of country doctor, street hustler and scam artist." To keep borscht on the table, he makes the rounds through the taverns and markets of Eastern Europe as a traveling miracle-worker, but his untamable passion is for manuscripts in any language.

Nehemiah's penchant for the word lands him in the company of drunkards, scholars, statesmen and monks, propelling him into hilarious, rollicking - if sometimes catastrophic - adventures in places where no sane 17th century Jew would dare step foot. NEHEMIAH is the story of a man who would swap life, religion, identity, and salvation just for the chance to hold a great work of literature in his hands, a misfit rabbi who finds himself in the center of history and at the breaking point of belief.

Combining the breadth of Olga Tokarczuk's THE BOOKS OF JACOB and the magical realism of Yaniv Itzkovitz's THE SLAUGHTERMAN'S DAUGHTER, Yakov Mayer's NEHEMIAH is a heady debut.

YAKOV Z. MAYER is a writer and academic historian. His novel NEHEMIAH was shortlisted for the Sapir Prize, and won the Prime Minister's Award and the KKL Goldberg Prize. Mayer's academic work focuses on book history, and the transition from manuscript culture to print culture. His academic Hebrew book "EDITIO PRINCEPS: the 1523 Venice Edition of the Palestinian Talmud and the Beginning of Hebrew Printing" was published by Magnes Press in 2022 and won the Shazar Prize for Jewish History. He lives with his family in Tel Aviv.